Right off the bat, I should say: I personally don’t really support or fuck with AI. Not because I take any offense to its existence as an artist, or that I think it will replace me in any way (it can’t and it won’t), but merely because it does not interest me in the slightest. Like…at all. To put this a different way: as some of you may know, I work in a library. It’s a multigenerational work environment, the ages of the people working there span from 18 to 60+. The other day a middle aged dude came in and asked one of the older librarians about “AI,” and she said, “Nah…I don’t care about that shit.” This made me burst out laughing because it was the perfect encapsulation of my thoughts on it, which I will get into below.
First of all, let’s talk about who likes AI. From my perspective, the types of people who are heavily interested in AI are NPCs who don’t generally think philosophically about life. These are the types of people who don’t really think critically or question things. I am not trying to be offensive here, but you know who I am talking about. The type of person who watches Marvel movies and enjoys having a couple beers with “the boys” while watching the Superbowl. They are not men, they are bugmen — the Nietszchean word used to define a man with no spirit or passion. They’re normal people who are impressed by things like AI. I’m not trying to sound condescending or making fun of them at all (I wish I was one of these types of people because my life would be much easier), I’m just painting an illustration of who (in my opinion) is more susceptible to this stuff or likely to enjoy anything technologically “new.” This type of person is one who would enjoy anything in the culture if they saw other people enjoying it, for the simple fact that they want to feel like they’re part of something and want to be in on a cultural conversation, etc. They don’t really curate their own tastes and preferences, they just go with the flow so to speak. That’s fine, they’re free to do so and that doesn’t necessarily affect me or my inner world.
Which brings me to my next point. Secondly, I want to address the idea some people seem to have that AI will “replace” real artists and art. As popular as AI has the potential to become (and it most likely will), this is not a scenario I see happening. What I think will happen is what has been happening with the cinema for awhile now: AI will give rise to stuff like Marvel movies (which one could argue are a form of AI already in the sense that they are not made by a director with a singular vision, but rather a committee and team of executives and shareholders), and they will be incredibly popular to the bugmen, but this does not mean real, organically made art will go away automatically. It very well may be that we’ll have entire theatres full of AI produced movies, with zero human made movies, for example. But this doesn’t mean necessarily that the ability for real humans to make stuff will ever go away.
The same will go for books and other written work. AI could very well get to the point where some influencer somewhere gets famous for becoming really good at telling a machine what to do (“Hey Chat GPT, write me a novel in the style of Philip Roth’s early works!), and it just might create a hilarious novel that is worth reading. But this does not mean the man who actually originally sat down to write such a thing is going to go away. Unless they start creating robots who murder real men, I am not really worried or concerned about AI.
The truth is, a computer could never replace me. A machine could never write poetry like me. A bugman could never write Street Players. I feel with my heart & balls, a computer has neither. You can’t program balls, they’re something you’re either born with or you earn through your character or not. It’s that simple. That poem I just posted on here the other day, for example, was inspired by real life around me and what I see happening to masculinity. A computer could never fucking understand that. Computers are just like females born in the 90s, all it knows is….eat hot chip and lie. But it has zero soul.
People excited about this stuff can sit there all they want and try to convince me that they’re “getting really good at making a computer do stuff,” but they never will. A computer does not have the real feeling and thought required to inspire and create a spark that leads to some kind of genuine artwork. To me, it’s like the difference between some guy reading you a very cut and dry telling of events off of Wikipedia versus the same guy telling you his life story in a smoky bar somewhere in Amsterdam; one is more factual and formally correct, fine, I’ll give you that. But the other will always have more soul. I would much rather have an artist in the world that slips up from time to time, forgets to take his medication, and goes off the rails, than some neutered, polished, boring guy with no real thoughts.
I feel the same way about AI and movies like Avatar 2. Yes, they are both fun. But to me, that’s all it is, fun. It should not be taken as seriously as work by a real artist. Avatar 2 is not art. It’s like 99% computer shit. And I’m sorry, but at a certain point it’s absurd to me to not call it what it is: smoke and mirrors. I understand that I might sound old or cranky or whatever, but I should re-iterate: I am not against AI and would never stop anyone from doing whatever they want artistically. I’m just saying I will be over here working on my own masterpieces instead. Your computer stuff will be way more popular, and you will most likely sell way more copies of whatever the hell it is you’re working on. But I don’t mind continuing to do my thing and selling (real) art to the handful of people still interested in that stuff.
The other thing to remember with AI produced work is that, aside from the lack of soul, there is no development. There is no “early work” period or “late stage career” AI work, to me it’s pretty much at the same level all the time, constantly. As a guy who has called himself a philosopher before (half-joking, but half-serious) I like the idea of being able to try on new ideas and hats, and you can see the development of different periods of my life. For example, when I was going around calling myself an incel. Or when I pretend to be a rapper for awhile. It’s just fun to play around with different identities like that. A person can read one of my books and think, “This is when he was in his nihilism period,” for example. When I was at the Van Gogh Museum recently, that was part of the joy of taking in all his work: you got to see different moments of his life, and what he was interested in at the time. You got to see Van Gogh become Van Gogh. With AI, there is no growth, it is all the same period. That is disinteresting to me on a human level.
P.S. As a small addendum before I end, I should also say that there are a couple aspects of AI I do find morally reprehensible. I object to AI in some cases on the grounds of moral turpitude due to its slippery slope. I don’t like how easy it is to rip off hardworking artists by paying them to paint something once, and then using that as a model forever. And I’m sure I don’t need to get into the whole pornography aspect of AI and how deepfakes have the potential to become incredibly powerful in this godless time we’re living in. I don’t think human beings are responsible enough to be given the benefit of the doubt in that regard, and I do believe the situation has the likelihood to do far more damage to people’s lives than good. I know I’ve said it before (in places such as my novel, The Lost Generation, which you should absolutely buy and support today!), but I was in high school when the first ever iPhone dropped, and there was a noticeable change in society before and after. Human beings were never the same after 2007, their behaviour got worse, their intelligence got worse, their ability to communicate and have empathy for each other got worse (you can see this clearly in woke culture and how people on both sides of the political spectrum have no real concern for the other party; some people act like a fucking nazi if you don’t agree with them). I am of the mind that technology has limits, and doesn’t improve humans past a certain point, and we have already hit that point. If I had the power to go back to what life was like before the iPhone, I would in a heartbeat. Human beings were better, but I know I’m in the minority. That’s okay, I know I’ve lost already. When it’s time for me to dip, I will do so gladly! I don’t think I’ll miss earth very much, I’m starting to like this place less everyday.
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